Category: people

“What set her apart was her willingness to be a fan. In a milieu of jaded critics, Scott wanted to believe in the possibilities of rock and the passion of the fans.”

Mahnaz Mohammadi, “a prominent Iranian documentary film-maker and women’s rights activist, whose work includes banned films about Iran’s society, … was picked up from her home in the capital Tehran by security officers who refused to show a warrant for her arrest and was taken to Evin prison.”

The film and television actor “was taken to hospital by ambulance on Tuesday, after being found slumped over in his London home. British media are reporting he had swallowed pills in what paramedics say was a suspected suicide attempt.”

“On the cusp of Canada Day, I put it to you that our taxes are collected and spent by a government that has contempt for us. They must think we are airheads, as they dole out our money to fund the celebration of the already rich and famous.”

“At one time or another he represented the painters Lee Krasner, Alice Neel, Milton Resnick and Joan Nelson, the painter and sculptor Louise Bourgeois and, in addition to [Robert] Mapplethorpe, the photographers Bruce Weber and Jan Groover. The gallery also represented the estates of Diane Arbus, Eva Hesse and Jean-Michel Basquiat.”

“The military-backed government of Burma, also known as Myanmar, has deported actor Michelle Yeoh, who stars as pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in an upcoming movie.”

“A South African anthropologist has asked permission to open the graves of William Shakespeare and his family to determine, among other things, what killed the Bard and whether his poems and plays may have been composed under the influence of marijuana.”

She “was one of Britain’s greatest and most popular actors, working on stage, television and film for more than half a century.” Among her most celebrated work was playing Marc Antony’s daughter Antonia in the TV series I, Claudius, co-starring with Maggie Smith in Lettice and Lovage, and a ferocious Martha in a National Theatre staging of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.

She was “a versatile character actress and musical comedy voice …who evolved from playing children’s roles like Baby Louise in the original Broadway production of Gypsy to Emma in Michael Weller’s drama Spoils of War and Grandma Gellman in the Tony Kushner-Jeanine Tesori musical, Caroline, or Change.”

“I don’t read it at all. I read other things: history, biography. I don’t have the same interest in fiction that I once did. … I don’t know. I wised up.”